Syracuse University SURFACE The Courier Libraries 1972 Rudolph Bultmann at Syracuse Gabriel Vahanian Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Vahanian, Gabriel. "Rudolph Bultmann at Syracuse." The Ernest S. Bird Library Dedication Issue. Spec. issue of The Courier 9.4 & 10.1 (1972): 57-65. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Courier by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. T H E c o U R I E R The Ernest S. Bird Library Dedication Issue SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES VOL. IX, NO.4 & VOL. X, NO.1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page On the Dedication of the Ernest S. Bird Library Melvin A. Eggers 3 The Courier, No.1, April 1958 Wayne S. Yenawine 4 The Building of a Library Warren N. Boes 6 Research Libraries Enter the Machine Age Betsy Knapp 12 Syracuse University Library, 1871-1972 Daniel Brassell 16 The Past as Future Antje B. Lemke 27 Leopold Von Ranke and the Von Ranke Library Jeremy C. Jackson 38 Rudolf Bultmann at Syracuse Gabriel Vahanian 57 Library Associates: Nineteen Supporting Years Benjamin J. Lake 66 The Post Standard Award 71 Rudolph Bultmann at Syracuse by Gabriel Vahanian The most distinguished Visiting Professor Syracuse University has had through its Department of Religion (1958-59), Rudolf Bultmann, born in 1884, still dominates the field of New Testament Studies. The University can take exceptional pride in having conferred upon him an honorary doctorate. In addition, the University Library is now the richer for being the recipient of a vast collection of materials originating from Professor Bultmann's eminent public career as well as from his personal life. The correspondence henceforth treasured by the Manuscripts Department of Syracuse University Library contains letters to and from the young promising theologians of the sixties as well as one, among others, frdm the already world-famous theologian ­ physician, Albert Schweitzer, in which he explains his decision to turn down a chair at the University of Leipzig in order to practice medicine in Africa. The Rudolf Bultmann Papers include not only manuscripts of his own works but also notebooks dating from student days when he was attending the lectures of famous theologians of that time, such as Harnack and Julicher. There is no doubt that with such an extraordinary collection the Library will play a significant role in furthering scholarship; Rudolf Bultmann, indeed, belongs to the future. As his recently published correspondence with Karl Barth (the other theological giant of the century) already demonstrates, Bultmann's thought has survived both the collapse of church-based Christendom and dogma­ capped Christian faith. Oddly enough, the correspondence with Barth begins in the days when Bultmann offered his collaboration to Barth in his gigantic effort to reappraise and redefine the nature of faith and ends with an exchange of views dealing with Bultmann's article on the death of God issue published under the title "The Idea of God and Modern Man." This ending of their correspondence is quite telling, it is symbolic: on the one hand, there is Karl Barth getting himself as it were locked up in the church in order to face Dr. Vahanian is Eliphalet Remington Professor ofReligion and Director of Graduate Studies in Religion at Syracuse University. Among his publications is the controversial The Death of God, 1961, as well as Wait Without Idols, 1964, No Other God, '1966, and La Condition de Dieu, 1970. 57 the enemy - atheism - but forgetting how unrecognizable the enemy has become; on the other hand, there is Bultmann meeting the enemy's attack by seeking to unmask him in order to let him stand naked in front of his own problem, the problem of God. For nothing less, Bultmann has consistently been arguing, nothing less than the self-understanding of an atheist is what man, according to the New Testament, needs in order to be able to exclaim, "I believe, help thou my unbelief." And by the same token, the world of the Bible, so dear to Barth, also encompasses our own post-Christian world. The Bible is not for Bultmann a document from the past. Nor does the New Testa­ ment, as Bultmann put it in one of his lectures while at Syracuse,l concern itself with relating an historical event which would ipso facto be misunder­ stood if it were understood "as a simple episode of the past which took place once upon a time, almost two thousand years ago." No, the New Testament is not merely a documentary of past events, of by-gones characteristic of a past still lingering on in our conscious and unconscious religio-cultural heritage. Rather, the New Testament as such makes sense only if it is itself attested by the on-going inventory of things to come, of the life ahead to which man, regardless of the circumstances and the epochs, remains bound. Indeed, the man of faith is not merely confronted with his past. He is also faced with the possibility of a new future, and the question to which he must answer is whether he will seek for this future elsewhere rather than where it lies open for him to step into it - right here and now. II The last point leads us straight into the heart of Bultmann's thought. At the core of his work we find him wrestling with three problems, actually three aspects of one and the same problem - that of man's relation to God (Le., anthropology and theology) understood in terms of that single context (Le., christology) which alone aims at preventing either the reduction of theology to anthropology, of God to man, or the elevation of man to God, the resorption of anthropology into theology. Indeed, according to tradi­ tional theological reflection, the doctrine of God is what constitutes an ellipse of which the doctrines of Christ and of man are, so to speak, the foci. Christ and man are thus understood in terms of God. Accordingly, God was seen as the supreme hypothesis, a principle through which everything" else was explained. The problem with su~h a God of the reason is that he soon becomes, in Archibald MacLeish's phrase, a God who is himself nothing but "reasons." And inevitably, this God who is "reasons" simply becomes my own raison d'etre, that of which I take possession. But, as Bultmann himself puts it in the Humanities Lecture delivered at Syracuse on a related topic/ 1 "What Alienates Modern Man from Christianity." 2 "The Concept of Freedom in Classical Antiquity and Christianity." 58 Page one of the original corrected . E~tmy~hologisierung (The Problemmanuscnpt of R~dolf Bultmann's Papers m the Manuscripts DepartmentofofDemythologlZiog)the Library. From the ZumRudolfProblemBultmannder 59 grace - Le., the believer's raison d'etre - is nothing to be possessed by man: "There is no possession of grace." Just as Christ abolishes the Law, so also is abolished that problem of God which is defined by moving from reason to faith. And just as it is not the'Law which can create freedom, but freedom which testifies to the Law, so is also the problem of God altered and radicalized when it is seen arising from within the context of that faith which is constitutive of human reality. And consequently, christology will provide the foci of anthropology and theology with their proper ellipse. We did not mean, however, to lose sight of the three problems around which Bultmann's theological reflection has revolved. On the contrary, in the light of the intervening comments, these problems can be stated in a more pregnant manner. The first problem is dealt with under the rubric of the mythological character of the language with which the New Testament speaks both of God and of man: as a believer, the theologian is today confronted with the necessity of demythologizing such a language if this language can still have a chance of speaking to the scientifically-oriented contemporary world. The second problem, a much more technical one in appearance, deals with the relation between history and eschatology: even at the risk of slightly disfiguring Bultmann's thought, we shall simplify this problem by saying that it deals with the contention that the believer's destiny is one which is at long last emancipated from the Law, Le., both from a self-sufficient nature and a self-fulfilling history. The end of the Law, Christ, is what articulates the condition of that man whose existence attests the reality of God. Which leads us to the third problem: its most deceptively simple formulation consists in saying that, no longer knowing Christ according to the flesh, the believer is likewise no longer caught between his past and his future, between an "already" and a "not yet," between "Jesus" and the "return of Christ," or between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith." Before trying to focus on the common denominator of these problems, we must further clarify and specify the issues involved in each of them. III The etiology of the first problem can be put into evidence fairly simply. The fact is that the universe of the New Testament is composed of three stories: heaven, earth, and hell; and man is seen as a battlefield between God and Satan. These supernatural powers intervene not only in the course of a man's life but also in the unfolding of natural events.